Tag: Jaquays

Zero to Complete Dungeon Generation, Waffle-Style

October 18th, 2022

Dungeon generation is one of my favorite parts of being a DM. Going from nothing to a finished dungeon is one of the most satisfying parts of the game. Done properly, designing a dungeon can be a great part of “Prep as Solo-Play.”

Everyone has their own process for designing dungeons from the ground up. Mine is based loosely on the BX rules along with a few things I personally enjoy.

I will soon link a dungeon designed using this method and explain what I was thinking through each step.

Step 1 – Concept Shopping

I have a list of ideas, vibes, mechanics, and themes for dungeons that I add to whenever inspiration strikes me. Here’s a sample from my list:

Hell
Poison
Sludge
Accursed
Gilded
Clockwork
Balance
Elevators
Sneaking
Eyes
Separation
Bridges
Weight
Outdoor Integration
Mutation
Time Limit
Already Dead
Hive
Forced Resurrection
Dead Monk’s Family Recipe
Leyline Extraction
Causeways
Alarms
Security Owls
Spiral Map, Overlooking Center
Inside the Mechanical Beast
Backtracking
Recontextualization via Tools
Shortcut
Vertical

When I sit down to design a dungeon, I pick about 10-20 things from this list that I think might be interesting for the dungeon and write them at the top of a piece of paper. I read them over and over to internalize the vibes I’m shooting for. I don’t worry too much that I include all of them, but whatever comes out as I work is good.

Step 2 – Monster Shopping

At this point, I decide what Level this dungeon will be. I tend to make lots of Level 1-5 dungeons or so. Remember that the Level of dungeon corresponds to the Level of the party it is intended for.

From here, I write out a list of ~6 monsters to put in the dungeon. I tend to roll on tables from the Moldy Basic book or from whatever Monster Manuals I find interesting. I have ~4 of them match the Level of the dungeon, with the other two being one or two levels above.

Whatever method you use to decide on your monsters, start thinking about how they might interact in a dungeon together. Pick one or two monsters to be the main inhabitants of the dungeon, then roll Number Appearing for all of them. For your main inhabitants, roll Number Appearing using the Lair numbers, and for the other monsters, roll using the regular numbers. At this point, you should start getting an idea of what they’re all doing in the dungeon.

Now, I will turn this list of monsters into a Wandering Monster Table. I put the strongest monsters at the bottom and include all the information I need to run the encounters.

For our example, if I am designing a Level 2 dungeon, 4 of the monsters will be 2 HD monsters, one will be 3 HD, and the last might be 4 HD. I’ve rolled/chosen the following monsters for the dungeon, along with their Number Appearing.

Here is an example from one of my other dungeons:

*Roll*	Creature Name	No. App.	HD	AC	ML	*Attacks*
1	Robber Fly	d6	1	14	8	Bite d8
2	Rock Baboon	d6	2	14	8	Club d6
3	Oil Beetle	d4	2	16	8	Bite d6, Special
4	Mannequin	2d6	2	12	5	Strangle d4
5	Carrion Crawler	d3	3	13	9	Paralysis x8
6	Ogre	d6	4	14	10	Club d10

Step 3 – Rough Layout

Now that a Monster table has been generated, it’s time to actually design the dungeon. I like to start by deciding on a rough number of rooms for the dungeon. I tend to add rooms as I go, so I like to start with 5-10 and go from there.

Now it’s time to outline a sort of flowchart for the dungeon. Then I sketch it out on dot paper to get an idea of how it will look. It is incredibly important to add plenty of choke points, decision trees, loops, secret passages, and objective rooms to make the dungeon layout interesting. I take inspiration from FPS games like CSGO and Valorant. After sketching it out, I tend to draw a Melan Diagram of the dungeon to check for these things. This point is where we work hard to ensure the dungeon has been thoroughly “Jaquaysed”.

At this point, I will often revise the layout of the rooms a bit, sketching it out a few times until I like how it looks. At this point, all the rooms are just numbered shapes. I have not figured out what each one will be like, but I may have a few ideas going as I sketch it out.

Step 4 – Stocking the Rooms

Now it’s time to start fleshing out what each room contains. I like to use the Dungeon Stocking Table from Moldy Basic with some slight changes, reflected here:

*Roll*	*Contents*	*Description*
1-2	Monster	Roll on the Encounter Table to determine which Monster inhabits the room and how many there are
3	Spoors	Roll on the Encounter Table to determine which Monster left the spoors
4	Trap	Either preventing passage through an area or guarding treasure
5	Special	Anything interactive that affects the dungeon experience
6	Empty*	May contain interesting items (like glass tubes) or things that communicate lore (like frescoes)

Roll once for each numbered area and mark down the results. Then roll on the following table for each room to determine whether there is treasure in the room or not:

*Roll*	*Monster Room*	*Trap Room*	*Empty/Spoor Room*
1	Yes	Yes	Yes
2	Yes	Yes	No
3	Yes	No	No
4-6	No	No	No

If a Monster Room is determined to have treasure, roll on the Treasure Type table given in the Monster Manual. Otherwise, roll on this table:

*Level*	*Silver Pieces*	*Gold Pieces*	*Gems (d100x10gp)*	*Jewelry (3d6x100gp)*	*Magic Items*
1	d6x100	50%: d6x10	5%: d6	2%: d6	2%: Any 1
2-3	d12x100	50%: d6x100	10%: d6	5%: d6	8%: Any 1
4-5	d6x1000	d6x200	20%: d6	10%: d6	10%: Any 1
6-7	d6x2000	d6x500	30%: d6	15%: d6	15%: Any 1
8-9	d6x5000	d6x1000	40%: d12	20%: d12	20%: Any 1

After rolling all this, you’ll know where all the monsters and whatnot are and how much total treasure there is. Now it’s a good idea to total up the treasure and write down where it all comes from. It should look something like this:

Room 4 – 500sp, 400gp
Room 6 (Guarded – White Ape) – 200sp, 200gp
Room 7 (Guarded – Chimera)– 4000sp
Room 9 (Guarded – Water Weirds) – 1200pp, 2 gems (950gp each), 5 jewelry (900gp each)
Room 10 (Trapped) – 200sp, 3 jewelry (1000gp each), 1 Magic Item

Unguarded – 500sp, 400gp

Total – 4900sp, 600gp, 1200pp, 2 gems (1900gp), 8 jewelry (7500gp), 1 Magic Item

Grand Total – 22,490gp value, 1 Magic Item

Step 5 – Revisions

Now, it’s time to make revisions. You can shuffle the treasures, monsters, traps, etc. around as desired. If you want to put the Water Weirds in Room 8 instead, that’s totally fine. Maybe the Water Weirds are there guarding Room 9 where the treasure is, or maybe the treasure is in the bottom of the fountain where they live. In any case, you’ll start to get ideas about how to hide the treasure, what the monsters are doing, etc. Channel these ideas and start rearranging everything until you’ve got something that makes sense for your dungeon

At this point, you’ll probably have ideas for what your Traps and Specials can be. I recommend riddles, puzzles, keys that match specific locks, talking walls, etc. Really anything that sparks your imagination.

You’ll probably want to redraw your map at this point, based on the revisions. This will probably be your final design of the map. Now all that’s left is to key the dungeon

Step 6 – Keying the Dungeon

Now that you’ve got your revised map and ideas for everything, you’ll need to key the dungeon by writing room descriptions for each room.

I try to add a few sensory details for each room, descriptions of the walls, doors, smells, sounds, etc. to help with descriptions. It is especially important to add information whenever there is a fork in the road, helping the players to make some decision. For example, if a hallway branches left and right, don’t just say it goes left and right, tell them that you smell the stench of death wafting from the right and you hear clinking cutlery from the left. This makes the decisions more than just a coin toss.

Explain where everything is in the room and how it works, including traps, treasure, secrets, and anything else in that vein. For monsters, explain what they might be doing in that room. This typically is the most time-consuming part of the dungeon-designing process. As you do this, your ideas will come to life and continue to develop. Think of potential hooks to get the party in this dungeon and write them down.

After finishing the key to each room, do one final look over for the dungeon layout, make any final revisions, and your dungeon is complete!

Minidungeon Monday – Tomb of Ghoulish Elopement

September 11th, 2022

I skipped last week and now I’ve got COVID again, so I’m take that as the world’s way of punishing me for my inconsistency. Anyway, this dungeon was originally designed to be a 5 Room Dungeon, using the B/X Dungeon Generation procedures as-written. I found it to be kind of boring that way, so I decided to spice it up a bit.

I recently heard in a discussion comparing B/X as it was played back in the day to the OSR way of playing B/X that OSR stuff tends to have significantly less treasure per dungeon. This is what inspired me to make the dungeon RAW according to B/X. It indeed has significantly more treasure than any OSR modules I’ve played. It was designed for 2nd or 3rd level, and should be pretty easy for a normal sized party. Again, I use Silver Standard, so if you play with Gold Standard, just multiply all treasure by 10.

Room Layout

In terms of room layout, I really wanted to add verticality to my dungeon inspired by FPS games that I’ve been playing recently. I added two raised platforms and a catwalk for this end, and I placed the stairs up to those platforms in strategic places. I imagined the Entrance as the “Attacker Spawn” and Room 9 as “Defender Spawn”, which makes some rooms clearly give the advantage to certain sides. For instance, the stairs leading up to the platform in Room 4 are on the “Attacker” side, so it’s harder for the enemies to get up there and have the advantage, whereas Room 5 gives the advantage to the “Defenders”.

I’ve long thought that archers and ranged enemies are way more powerful than I see them get credit for. I imagine that a few well-placed archers could TPK a party pretty easily, as long as the Magic-User doesn’t have a spell like Fireball. This dungeon was my attempt at testing that out with Rock Baboons. So I gave them some rocks and wedding decor to chuck at the party from those platforms with some makeshift ramparts.

Dungeon Objectives and Stories

This dungeon has caused me to start questioning whether dungeons should have clear “objectives” and “stories/explanations” that need to be interacted with to get the full amount of treasure. This one clearly has an objective: Kill all three ghouls to use their pendants to open the way to the treasure in Room 9. Their story is that they eloped and this is where they were wed (and subsequently transformed into ghouls by the Mythic Underworld). My previous dungeon had an objective too: do the test of virtue to see if you can get the treasure.

It seems that authentic old-school dungeons were lighter in this regard, functioning more as a collection of rooms with monsters, traps, and treasure scattered throughout. Treasure is not gated behind a clear objective as often, but it does still happen. Delving these dungeons would probably feel more like a risk/reward game than a “complete the objective” game. You can keep going if you want, but you can stop at any moment.

I am torn about what I think about this. I think dungeons like this one are good because they naturally give players a hook to follow and clues to put together, but it may feel a bit more like a railroad, requiring the players to play the dungeon by my rules to get the reward. To offset this, I think it is even more important to make Jaquaysed dungeons with plenty of choices if they have a clear objective. I wonder if more linear dungeons are fine for the risk/reward types.

In the future, I hope to create a more classic risk/reward “story/objective-less” dungeon to test out this theory. I think it could be like a “boss rush” or “gauntlet” type of thing that you tend to see in video games as a bonus mode. I am hoping to make an inverted wizard tower for my next dungeon though, specifically because I’ve never done one before and I like the idea of random meaningless chaos.

Wandering Monsters

*Roll*	Creature Name	No. App.	HD	AC	ML	*Attacks*
1	Robber Fly	d6	1	14	8	Bite d8
2	Rock Baboon	d6	2	14	8	Club d6
3	Oil Beetle	d4	2	16	8	Bite d6, Special
4	Mannequin	2d6	2	12	5	Strangle d4
5	Carrion Crawler	d3	3	13	9	Paralysis x8
6	Ogre	d6	4	14	10	Club d10

If you feel like it, roll a d7 and make 7 a Lost Gnome – Inspired by @carsonthewombatshaman from the OSR Discord

This dungeon is the tomb of a couple who eloped. The bride was a princess, the groom a peasant. To evade scandal for romance with someone low-born, the bride and groom took a witness and priest to this dungeon to perform a wedding. As a child, she was assaulted with fantasies of thousands dancing at her wedding, dressed all in finery under a chandelier and the like. She had the dungeon outfitted with the decorations of her dreams and filled seats with enchanted mannequins. They never left the dungeon, causing a great mystery in the ancient kingdom.

Following their marriage, the four were trapped here and turned into nasty undead because of the magic of the Mythic Underworld. The dungeon was recently uncovered by the monsters that currently inhabit it, turning it into their lair. The Ogres are the main inhabitants of this dungeon now, with the Rock Baboons and Robber Flies acting as their pets.

Key

1 – Entrance Hall

Statue of a male human dressed in fancy garb against the western wall. Crumbled statue of a female human dressed in royal clothes against the eastern wall. A large unlit brazier is beside each
Door to the north is wooden with large iron bands. It has expanded due to moisture and is stuck. The faint aroma of a feast emanates from the other side
Tunnel to the northeast appears to be natural and connected to this room because of a cave in. Vinegar-like stench wafts from within

2 – Banquet Hall

Massive banquet table covered with delicious food (30 days worth of rations), some of which is actually made of precious metals and gems (worth a total of 102gp)
3 Ogre statues sit frozen at the table, eating soup voraciously. The remaining 9 seats are filled by exquisitely-dressed mannequins
Touching anything on the table will cause the 3 petrified Ogres to be released from their spells and attack the party, but the food will be otherwise safe to consume and the treasure safe to steal

From *Pan’s Labyrinth* (2006) dir. Guillermo del Toro

3 – Oil Beetle Nest

3 Oil Beetles burrowing around. A corpse lies covered in blisters, half eaten by the beetles

4 – Ceremony Hall

2 Rock Baboons prance around in wedding garb stolen from mannequins
Dozens of mannequins sit in wooden chairs on the south side of the room, dressed in tattered raiment fit for a wedding, facing the platform on the north end of the room
Destroyed chandelier has crashed down from the ceiling on top of the mannequin sitting area. The chandelier has been looted for most of its valuable parts, but it can be scavenged further to find 185gp worth of crystals
Gilded sarcophagus set into the northern wall of the platform beside a worn tapestry of a man and a woman kissing
- If the sarcophagus is opened, the witness Ghoul escapes and attacks immediately. He is wearing a pendant with a symbol of an eye (worth 100gp) a monocle made of diamond (worth 40gp), and a ruined tuxedo. In his pocket is a moldy, but finely crafted fountain pen (worth 10gp) and a key (to Room 9)
- The tapestry conceals a secret door to Room 6
Shattered stained glass windows hang over parts of the cave walls. They are worthless now

5 – Groom’s Chamber

4 Rock Baboons play catch with 5 damaged wedding decorations (worth a total of 165gp) and some small boulders from atop the platform and catwalk in the room. They have build a makeshift rampart out of scraps of wood along the edge of the platform and will chuck rocks and decorations at any perceived threats to their playground
Gilded sarcophagus set into the western wall atop the platform
- If opened, the groom Ghoul escapes and attacks immediately. He is wearing a pendant with a symbol of a top hat (worth 240gp), a wedding band with vows inscribed (worth 60gp), an ebony cane (worth 30gp), and a ruined tuxedo.

6 – Priest’s Quarters

Inhabited by the priest Zombie muttering ancient prayers in a long-dead language. He wears a priestly crown beset with pearls (worth 100gp) and swings a small censer of tarnished brass (worth 10gp).
Large offering box on the eastern side of the room containing 350sp and 10pp and a small lever. If pulled, it releases a Sleep Gas trap and opens the secret door to Room 7

7 – Decoration Storage

3 Carrion Crawlers sit atop a pile of 300sp, and one pristine small piece of glasswork in the shape of the bride and groom (worth 545gp, 50gp if damaged, takes 3 slots to carry safely)

8 – Bride’s Chamber (Locked – Key on Witness Ghoul in Room 4)

Gilded sarcophagus set in the western wall
- If the sarcophagus is opened, the bride Ghoul escapes and attacks immediately. She is wearing a pendant with a symbol of a tiara (worth 380gp) a tiara set with a beautiful sapphire (worth 100gp), a wedding band with vows inscribed (worth 60gp) and a ruined wedding dress
On the eastern wall there is a beautiful fresco painted with images of the bride and groom kissing with the pendants featured prominently, centered around what is obviously a door, but with no hinges or obvious means of opening it
- If two characters kiss while wearing the respective pendants, being watched by another character wearing the third, the door to Room 9 will open
- Inscribed on the door is the following:

Two, separated by status in birth
Join with a kiss of mirth
Their pendants over their heart
A witness playing his part
The door to love eternal shall open

9 – Bedchamber

A massive, luxurious bed fills most of the room. The room is lit by candles and filled with incense that will burn forever
The room is filled with a pile of 1,000sp, 700gp, 50pp, and 5 wedding gifts worth a total of 1050gp

Total Treasure

30 Rations
33,120sp worth of Jewelry, Finery, Gifts, etc
13,300sp in Coin
Total Value: 46,420sp